The Curtain Speech in Dürrenmatt's The Physicists

THE CURTAIN SPEECH IN •• DURRENMATT'S THE PHYSICISTS THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF WHICH CHARACTER will appear and which situation will arise in the imaginative plays of Friedrich Diirrenmatt has a limitation; in one respect, there is a recurring pattern of character and event. The denouement usually comes as a nightmarish confrontation between the protagonist and the person representing the complete frustration of his endeavors, an agent of the fate which in classic tragedy strikes down the hero, in Diirrenmatt an instrumentality of blind chance which functions instead in the life of the anti-hero.l The climax of the struggle between the character whose striving is the subject of the play and the character who negates his plans brings utter defeat to the activist-hero. At this point, however, a reversal occurs-victory snatched from the jaws of defeat,2 which also is typical in the plays of Diirrenmatt. Laying down his banner, relinquishing his quest, the protagonist has a change of heart. He recognizes the vanity implicit in the attempt to foist upon the world an order based on personal convictions, that is, rationalized objectives. In all humility he awaits, instead of a solution to life's dilemma, the unction of God's grace. Diirrenmatt has proclaimed his intention in regard to this recurrent factor in plot and theme (referring specifically to Frank der Filntte): "In der Katastrophe muf3 die Wahrheit sichtbar werden. . . . Der verlogene Geist muf3 als Blasphemie erkennbar werden.... Dem Menschen, der in seiner angeblichen Verzweiflung schwelgt, wird ein Mensch gegeniibergestellt, den in seiner Todesstunde die Erkenntnis der wahren Freiheit des Menschen ..b f"ll "3 U er a t.... In play after play Diirrenmatt depicts the struggle of the righteous4 and self-deluded against the annihilators of meaningfulness in life, the self-destructive. And at the climactic moment, when the seeker 1 "Planmaf3ig vorgehende Menschen wollen ein bestimmtes Ziel erreichen. Der Zufall trifft sie dann am schlimmsten, wenn sie durc-h ihn das Gegenteil ihres Ziels erreichen: Das, was sie befiirchteten, was sie 7U vermeiden suchten (z.B. Oedipus)," Friedrich Diirrenmatt, "Zwanzig Punkte zu den Physikern," Komodien II (Ziirich, n.d.), p. 354. 2 One involuntarily thinks of Mathilde von Zahnd. "Die zahne der Gerechtigkeit " is a Biblical phrase. S Friedrich Diirrenmatt, "Rede an die Kritiker," Bestand und Versuch (Ziirich, 1964), p. 193 f. 4 Cf. Christian Markus Jauslin, Friedrich Durrenmatt (Zinich, 1964), p. 8: "Ein zentraler, immer wieder auftauchender Gedanke ... ist der Gedanke der Gerechtigkeit." 40 1970 DURRENMATT'S The Physicists 41 for absolute justice has lost to his cynical and opportunistic opponent, Diirrenmatt redeems him and in the twinkling of an eye converts him from a believer in the rational and legalistic to a believer in the paradoxical , in personal salvation, in a "credo quia absurdum."5 In the first play by Diirrenmatt to cross the boards this pattern appears. Knipperdollinck in Es steht geschrieben lives by the letter of God's law and meets a shattering defeat at the hands of a wilfully uncomprehending world. But just as he lies dying on the rack, his moment of triumph comes; the intangible faith he has been trying to express in literal terms becomes real. "In der Parodie des Glaubens ahnt man das Glauben...."6 In the very title of Diirrenmatt's next play this kind of believer is symbolically portrayed-Der Blinde. Challenged by opponents who lack any and all convictions, he becomes their victim, that is, also, the victim of his own blindness. But Diirrenmatt establishes at the end of the play that the sighted in all their disillusionment have proved nothing; the man living with his illusions or living in faith, however, has proved the feasibility, perhaps even the necessity, of living his way. Diirrenmatt next turned, in delineating the problem of man's arrogance in the sight of God, from the turgid language and slow movement of the expressionistic play to the wit and sprightliness of comedy. The dimension of depth remained; in all the subsequent comedies, appropriately called tragicomedies, the climax is a moment of truth: "Es mup daher etwas geschehen, das uns von der Biihne aus anspricht, unser Gewissen beunruhight, uns anHillt, storend, qualend, etwas, das die Komodie zerstort. . . ."7...